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Sorry if this sounds crazy.
I've been wanting to build some kind of project for it that uses the old school nature of the machine with modern conveniences. As an example, it's way easier to create graphics now, but the machine has really limited methods to recreate those.
I have an old Osborne 1 that worked the last time I plugged it in-- years ago. I would be shocked if the 5 1/4" discs are still readable. If they aren't, or I wanted to add some new software (like a better compiler) is there a place where I can find CPM boot disks etc? It would really be fun to write some C or Pascal or even (less fun) BASIC. Sorry if this sounds crazy.
Time to pull out my Acer Aspire from 2006, and make something with it :)
Also: what a blast from the past to see Kyodai mahjongg on Andrei's desktop in last year's challenge <3
Participated last year with my Thinkpad R61 that I still use as my main laptop after getting so cozy with it during the challenge. A lot of the group was great, but some friends I invited to the challenge had a bad time in the irc with transphobes and we all dropped out. I hope this year people moderate the chat a bit better, but I understand its not their day job to police random folk that enter the hobby challenge…
That sucks, and the channel or network should do something about it.
IRC is how I was friends with many trans people, before we knew the word trans.
It makes sense: it was much easier to pass online. So you could just hang out and talk about programming or whatever, and no one cared what plumbing you were born with.
Of course, there were always some people being antisocial on IRC, and that's why there were channel ops, war scripts, and IRCops.
I think I recall one or two occasions when someone attacked a channel I was on, and then later came back and reconciled. There should be more of the learning to play nice with others, but less toxic to start with.
Participated last year with my Thinkpad R61 that I still use as my main laptop after getting so cozy with it during the challenge. A lot of the group was great, but some friends I invited to the challenge had a bad time in the irc with transphobes and we all dropped out. I hope this year people moderate the chat a bit better, but I understand its not their day job to police random folk that enter the hobby challenge…
> A lot of the group was great, but some friends I invited to the challenge had a bad time in the irc with transphobes and we all dropped out. That sucks, and the channel or network should do something about it. IRC is how I was friends with many trans people, before we knew the word trans. It makes sense: it was much easier to pass online. So you could just hang out and talk about programming or whatever, and no one…
Things are much better off at IRL gatherings I've noticed. Vintage Computer Festival events have been very open and welcoming to all peoples without issue in my experience.
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> A lot of the group was great, but some friends I invited to the challenge had a bad time in the irc with transphobes and we all dropped out. That sucks, and the channel or network should do something about it. IRC is how I was friends with many trans people, before we knew the word trans. It makes sense: it was much easier to pass online. So you could just hang out and talk about programming or whatever, and no one…
Yeah it sucks. Since then I've tried to better vet retro tech groups before inviting more friends along. It seems rather unfortunate that more often than not old hardware enthusiast groups come with old beliefs. Things are much better off at IRL gatherings I've noticed. Vintage Computer Festival events have been very open and welcoming to all peoples without issue in my experience.
My anecdotal impression is that early Internet overall was, on average, more enlightened and amiable than Internet today.
Our earlier experience: Nobody knows you're a dog, people are excited about the possibilities, people are open to meeting others around the world, people see others sharing just to share, people haven't been conditioned to intolerant extremism by a couple decades of propaganda, etc.
Today we'll meet intolerance and meanness in many places, and we might want to call that "old beliefs" in that they are outmoded, and want to think that the latest generation will be smarter and OK. But it's certainly not just older people being hostile. And some groups of older people (e.g., much of early Internet) already did it better in many ways, before society backslided. When kids are trying to repair society, they can find allies in older people too.
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>Since 2013, I have used a laptop made in 2009 as my normal, everyday laptop. What's the specs and what apps are you running?
Intel Atom, 1.66GHz. 2Gib RAM. I mostly run a web browser, some terminal emulators and a mail reader. Oh, and Emacs.
I'm from a developing country and I had a 2010 dual core Celeron notebook with 4GB DDR3 and I found it unusable in 2016-2018. Can't imagine still having to use that today. Especially for browsing the web today.
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the storage will eventually fail and you will be able to do nothing about it (unless you have some pretty good rework chops). I do not recommend apple laptops (with soldered storage) for very long term applications like this for this reason alone.
A slight tangent but BGA rework is pretty easy to learn, and I recommend doing so. I find it an invaluable skill for upgrading/repairing/hacking modern hardware.